In the age of an extremely high development of artificial intelligence, deepfake technology is one of the most controversial technologies, to the news about which they turn. Although it has been applied as a source of entertainment, satire and even education, the darker side of its use is beginning to come into light-one of them being its popularity in the form of deepfake interviews.
The so-called AI deepfake interviews involve the usage of synthetic media video, audio, or both to create a fake interview with a person or a group of people impersonated by the machine learning algorithm. With the boundary between original and synthetic material continuing to grow clear, it is more essential than ever before to get to grips with the repercussions of fake interviews, and the way in which they are transforming the role of news and information within our consciousness, and how they are influencing the reality of online reliability.
What is Deepfake Interview?
Deepfake interviews are artificial videos or recordings in the form of an interview that is made in such a way as to resemble a particular personality, most often this is a famous person who says or does something never said or done by this human being. These tools are used to produce very realistic impersonations with the help of AI algorithms trained using hours-long sequences of video footage, records of voices, and even facial expressions. The ultimate effect? A false interview that looks terrifying real.
AI fake interviews have two general types:
Interviews-inventions with real personalities- such as in which the mentions of the public personalities seem to have utterances which they did not.
The interviews of fully fictional characters born to portray a character of an expert or insider to propagate disinformation.
Neither of the two types is less able to deceive people and they have already been held against nefarious intentions of all kinds in politics, journalism, and social media.
Real-Life Examples
Another notorious case was in 2023, when an interview with a fake Elon Musk spread all over the Internet. In the video the imitated Musk urged the viewers to buy into a cryptocurrency scam. The video was actually so convincing that people were fooled by it and it took the presence of thousands to be able to unravel the video.
On another example, a false interview with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was created and shared in the first months of Russian-Ukrainian conflict. It depicted him allegedly calling on troops to surrender- something potentially risky and very realistic in real life.
Those cases show how deepfake interviews created in AI can be used to spread fake information, to influence people, or to smear someone.
What Goes on to Produce Deepfake Interviews?
Making a deepfake interview consists of a combination of AI technologies:
Facial recognition and motion-capture: AI systems transfer facial expressions of one person to the face of another.
Voice cloning: This is when the AI will learn to speak with the voice of a person because it uses audio samples to teach itself how to talk.
Lip-syncing tools: They are used to make sure that speech appears naturally in coherence with the movement of the lips taking away the illusion.
After training, these tools have the potential to produce new content that fools in the digital world almost perfectly, questioning the reality of digital communication.
The Threats of AI False Interviews
Applications of a deepfake technology during interviews cause multiple risks:
Disinformation Campaigns
Sending misleading stories through deepfakes can be achieved in political hotbeds or when there is an election taking place.
Reputational Damage
An artificial interview with a celebrity, politician or CEO uttering something offensive or controversial can destroy careers and affect trust by the population.
Dishonesty and Lies
Similar to the example of Elon Musk, AI fake interviews can be employed to bait the victims into unscrupulous financial scams.
Journalistic Integrity
In case the news companies make a mistake and publish false interviews, the reputation of the media will be tarnished- falling into the skeptical eyes of the people.
Fighting Deepfake Interviews
Some efforts and technologies are being created in order to subvert this increasing menace:
Deepfake detection tools Available tooling for items manipulated by deepfakes has been provided by companies such as Microsoft and startups such as Deepware and Sensity
Media authentication standards: Technologies such as blockchain and watermarking are under development to allow authenticating the source and refuse of the digital content.
Legislation: Others are enacting laws that criminalize the production and share of malice deepfakes.
But, with deepfake capabilities put within closer reach and rising in calibers, detection will need to be one step ahead.
Ethical Considerations
Not every deepfake interview is evil. Others are produced to be educational or artistic like documentaries that resurrect historical figures digitally. Nonetheless, it should be transparent. Viewers should not be manipulated and deceived, which is why it is necessary to make it clear that the material is AI-enhanced.
Noble deepfakes, those applied with opt-in and revealed, may be pioneering. However, unless there are the right set of instructions and checks, the boundary between the real and the false keeps becoming dubious.
Final Thoughts
It is important that the people, media bodies, and policymakers update themselves as the deepfake technology is developing. With the advent of deepfake interviews, it is evident that we have reached the dawn of the synthetic media era where seeing and hearing should not be mistaken as believing.
It will not only be the issue of finding superior means of detection, but the task of building the digital literacy and ethics of AI-produced products becomes the issue. Since in this new world, perhaps our greatest form of defense is the ability to distinguish between what is real or that which is illusion.
